he had any other home.Of theatrical people there were Gus Waize and Horace O'donavan and Lester Meyerand George Duckweed and Francis Bull.Also from New York were the Chromes and the Backhyssons andthe Dennickers and Russel Betty and the Corrigans and the Kellehers and the Dewars and the Scullys and S
W.Belcher and the Smirkes and the young Quinns.divorced now,and Henry L.Palmetto,who killed himselfby jumping in front of a subway train in Times Square.
Benny McClenahan arrived always with four girls.They were never quite the same ones in physical person.but they were so identical one with another that it inevitably seemed they had been there before.I haveforgotten their namesJaqueline.I think.or else Consuela.or Gloria or Judy or June.and their last nameswere either the melodious names of flowers and months or the stemer ones of the great American capitalistswhose cousins,if pressed,they would confess themselves to be.
In addition to all these I can remember that Faustina Obrien came there at least once and the Baedeker girlsand young Brewer,who had his nose shot off in the war.and Mr.Albrucksburger and Miss Haag,his fiancee.and Ardita Fitz-Peters and Mr.
P.Jewett,once head of the American Legion,and Miss Claudia Hip.with a man reputed to be her chauffeur.and a prince of something.whom we called Duke,and whose name,if I ever knew it.I have forgotten.
All these people came to Gatsby's house in the summer.
At nine o'clock.one morning late in July.Gatsby's gorgeous car lurched up the rocky drive to my door andgave out a burst of melody from its three-noted horn.It was the first time he had called on me,though I hadgone to two of his parties,mounted in his hydroplane.and,at his urgent invitation,made frequent use of hisbeach.
"Good morning.old sport.You're having lunch with me to-day and I thought we'd ride up together."He wasbalancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly
Americanthat comes.I suppose,with the absence of lifting work or rigid sitting in youth and,even more.76with the formless grace of our nervous,sporadic games.This quality was continually breaking through hispunctilious manner in the shape of restlessness.
He was never quite still:there was always a tapping foot somewhere or the impatient opening and closing ofa hand.
He saw me looking with admiration at his car.
"It's pretty.isn't it.old sport?"He jumped off to give me a better view.
"Haven't you ever seen it before?"I'd seen it.Everybody had seen it.It was a rich cream color.bright withnickel,swollen here and there in its monstrous length with triumphant hat-boxes and supper-boxes andtool-boxes,and terraced with a labyrinth of wind-shields that mirrored a dozen suns.Sitting down behindmany layers of glass in a sort of green leather conservatory.we started to town.
I had talked with him perhaps half a dozen times in the past month and found,to my disappointment,that hehad little to say:So my first impression,that he was a person of some undefined consequence,had graduallyfaded and he had become simply the proprietor of an elaborate road-house next door.
And then came that disconcerting ride.We hadn't reached West Egg village before Gatsby began leaving hiselegant sentences unfinished and slapping himself indecisively on the knee of his caramel-colored suit.